Bus Boyk: The hall of fame fiddler took fans along for inspired musical rides

View full sizeRoger Jensen/The Oregonian/2003Bus Boyk, left, gathered with John Stewart, James Mason and Hollis Taylor for an informal performance at Brass Reed & Guitar shop in 2003.

Cowboy fiddler Norval "Bus" Boyk, 92, died recently in Redmond after a long, rich life during which he played thousands of shows and defined what it means to be "a musician's musician."

"He had the utmost respect from his fellow musicians, no matter what style or genre of music they played," said Hollis Taylor, a well-known violinist and composer now living in Australia. "Audiences and musicians alike always found resonance in what Bus played on his fiddle. The understatement of his musical style was matched by his kindness and humbleness as a person."

Taylor, a former Portlander, was a friend and band mate of Boyk's and considered him a mentor -- she's devoting part of www.hollistaylor.com to stories and recollections of Boyk from his many friends. Her book and CD, "The Cowboy Fiddle of Bus Boyk," includes transcriptions of Boyk's deceptively simple playing.

"Playing next to Bus in Ranch Dressing, Fiddle Summit, and other groups through the years was the best education I had into styles such as swing, Western swing, country and cowboy," she said. "He loved music with all his soul, and he was a sparkplug onstage. Sometimes Bus would play so simply that you would think the music was about to stop or fall apart, and then he would suddenly toss off something brilliant but unexpected -- he would have a smile on his face, and we would both laugh."

Portland fiddler James Mason also shared many a stage with Boyk: "His music reached out to everyone. Bus always insisted that when people enjoyed his music it was because he kept his improvisation close to the melody. Actually he rarely played, or even touched the melody during his solos, but it was never far away. Bus had a way of dancing around a melody and casting light upon it from different directions, bringing out its inherent beauty like a perfectly framed picture.

Boyk was a gentleman, and so humble that most would never suspect they were in the presence of a member of the Western Swing Society's Pioneers of Western Swing Hall of Fame or one of the first inductees into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame.

"He had charm and a smile that was incredible," said fiddler Kevin Healy, a longtime friend of Boyk's. "He had that charisma that was so simple because it came from the heart, just like his playing. In all the years I knew him, I never saw him get mad at anybody."

His old band mate from the Sons of the Golden West, the late Sammy White, said as much in a 1995 interview in The Oregonian: "I guess that Bus is the only person in the world without an enemy. He's the most humble, honest guy -- you won't find anybody who has a bad word to say about Bus."

He was born Norval Boyk in 1917 in Everett, Wash., and got his first violin lesson about the same time he got his nickname, Bus, for comic strip character Buster Brown. In the early '20s, a door-to-door salesman came through town and persuaded Boyk's mother to buy violin lessons for a buck a week, at a time when his father was pulling down $3 a day at the sawmill.

Boyk almost quit the violin before he entered high school and decided to get serious about music. He practiced for hours a day and eventually landed the first violin chair in the school orchestra during his senior year.

While he was absorbing classical technique and theory, he was also meeting and jamming with jazz and country musicians. Add in the big swing bands that filled dance halls and the airwaves, and Boyk was in the perfect place to be an innovator.

Boyk's technique was a major part of the mix, but he was never a hot licks player. His overwhelming musicality was the key element of Boyk's style -- he was the man who couldn't play a bad note and would never stoop to playing a dozen where one -- the perfect one -- better served the song.

"He was an inspiration," Healy said. "He knew that playing music wasn't about how good you are but about using all your skill and technique to create something of beauty. Bus was truly in touch with the Muses."

Boyk fiddled on countless stages across the country and played on radio and television -- and once on the fantail of the RMS Queen Elizabeth, when he played "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" for hundreds of returning soldiers and war brides. He recorded with people such as cowboy singer Jimmy Wakely and fiddler Buddy Spicher, and played with scores of bands, including the Sons of the Golden West, the Rancho Serenaders, the Yeary Brothers, Roy Jackson and the Northwesterners, Everything's Jake, Ranch Dressing and the Fiddle Summit.

He fiddled for the famous: Hoot Gibson, Gary Cooper and Lyndon Johnson. And legend has it that he taught Wayne Newton to play the "Orange Blossom Special."

"Well, that's what they say," Boyk said in 1995. "Me, I'm not so sure. I do know that when we were in Elko, Nev., back in 1955, he was staying at a motel across the street and I recorded 'Orange Blossom Special' and 'Ragtime Annie' for him on this little tape recorder he had. A few years later, he was playing those songs in his act."

He kept playing and inspiring new generations of musicians even after supposedly retiring in the 1980s, and he won a fiddler's contest and recorded a live album in 1992, when he was 74. He played nearly up until the day he died, Healy said.

Healy and a guitarist friend backed up Boyk in 2005, when he was one of several fiddlers playing at Centrum's Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Wash. On the night of the public concert, the inflexible rule was: No ovations allowed, lest the schedule become hopelessly mired.

"All he had to do was look up with that twinkle in his eye, and he had the crowd right away," Healy said. "There were some technical glitches to his playing, and places where he lost time because his hearing was shot but that crowd just roared. He got a standing ovation and they wouldn't let him go."

"He was always thinking about new ways to improvise," said Taylor. "He never got stuck just repeating himself. Every gig was a fresh slate. Bus Boyk was an American hero, and he was my hero."

Services: Bus Boyk's friends plan to celebrate his life with a potluck and, of course, music at an Oregon City farm at 1 p.m., Sunday, July 25. For more information call William or Susan Keyser: 503-266-9257.